


Through the Water Wall

by aj_linguistik



Category: Sword Art Online (Anime & Manga)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Deaf Character, F/F, I use a little bit of a conlang, I'm going to stress you out I'll warn you RIGHT NOW, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Like canon he thinks he likes Alice but he actually just sees her as a sister, M/M, Mature for inappropriate jokes, Mature for violence, Nudity, Slow to realize his feelings for Kirito, Suicide Attempt, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2020-01-11 21:17:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18432278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aj_linguistik/pseuds/aj_linguistik
Summary: I remember Alice. I remember her cries. I remember that last day filled with sunshine. But I opened my eyes and it's like it was all a dream. There's a man here who swears he believes me, that it was real. He'll do anything to help me. Anything. It's like he's desperate for something. He's got this allure...and I wonder if there's something more I want from him than just help.





	1. The Day I Last Remembered

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I had a vivid dream of Eugeo being the one pulled away from Alice, but he's still the one trying to get back to her. And I thought about how I often think that Eugeo confused his canon feelings and was like "I love Alice so I'm going to save her!" when in reality he's just very loyal to her as a brother-like friend. So I combined those thoughts into this- "I think I love Alice and want to get back to her- but along the way I kinda realized that was BS I just love her as a friend." **also in what piece that I write is he NOT gay for Kirito aldgahdga**
> 
> If you wanted fluff, go look at my other recent upload. Because this is gonna hurt. imsosorry.

            The sun peeked through the clouds and forced its way down through the leaves of the forest canopy in such a way that the ground appeared to be freckled with light. A gentle breeze lifted the thinner branches, causing them to sway up and down like ducks bobbing in the water. It was warm—the kind of warm that wasn’t too humid nor too dry. It kissed your cheeks softly, as if scared to cause you distress. I remember it so distinctly now.

            That was the day I last remember, actually.

            I walked through the forest, accompanied only by her. Alice Zuberg. The girl with the flowing golden hair, the deep blue eyes, and skin so pale it reminded me of porcelain. I wanted to reach out and touch that skin—only her fingers. There were rules and boundaries one had to be mindful of. Holding her hand wasn’t forbidden, though. I just wanted to hold her hand that day.

            The desire burned in my heart. I wasn’t sure what to make of that desire. I’d grown up with her; we were practically raised together. A poor farm boy and a slightly-less-poor elder’s daughter who were the best of friends: that was us. But lately, I wondered if I wanted to be something besides her friend.

            She turned around and smiled at me. Those mixed-up feelings created butterflies in my stomach. What did I want from her? What did she want from me? I needed to sort both of those things out. We were eighteen—only a few more years and she’d be married off to someone, with little room to consider me as a friend or otherwise.

            “Say, Eugeo. Do you want to check out _that_?”

            Returning her smile, I nodded. She crept along the path, leading us to the destination as quietly as possible. We positioned ourselves in a bush and peered out at the site. It was something we’d found a few days ago. The whole scene captivated us last time we’d seen it. It was otherworldly. The people there wore strange clothing and spoke using words we didn’t understand.

            The most intriguing bit of it all, though, was the large, round object lying flat on the ground. It resembled a pool of water, if I had to choose something familiar to compare it to. But that water wasn’t the right color—it had waves of blues and purples and glistened with white glowing flecks that resembled stars. The exterior of this so-called pool was cold, grey, and symmetrical.

            “There’s no one here, today,” Alice said.

            Her eyes glittered with excitement.

            “Why don’t we go and check it out?”

            Before I could protest, she was back on her feet, hurrying over to the object without a care in the world. I didn’t want to seem like a scaredy-cat to her; I stepped out of the bush and followed behind her, scanning the area for those strange people as I walked. Alice ran all the way up to the edge of the object and peered down.

            “Do you hear that, Eugeo?”

            I came to a stop beside her. The object was much bigger than it had seemed from a few mels away. I focused on what she’d said. The sound coming from the object sounded like a low thrumming. With that thrumming, there was a faint, almost musical sound coming from it as well. I cautiously lowered my head and turned my ear.

            “It sounds like…a voice,” I murmured.

            A voice speaking in a tongue I didn’t understand. Or singing in it. The voice sounded musical in and of itself; it was hard to know whether or not this was a song or just simply how the language sounded. It was pleasing to the ear. I found myself inexplicably smiling as I listened to it. Alice giggled.

            “What do you think it is?” I asked.

            She hummed.

            “A window to the goddesses,” she said.

            I thought about that notion. She implied that the goddesses could be seen by looking into this object, but all I could see was the watery surface that reflected not the day sky above us, but rather the night. Perhaps, just like with a window, they had to walk past it in order to be seen. I tentatively reached out and tried to touch the surface.

            “Oi, _gorere wux_!”

            Alice and I whirled around to see a few of the men in the strange clothing run over to us. Whatever he said was in a different language I couldn’t place. I instinctively placed myself in front of Alice.

            “We were just curious!” Alice said, peeking around my shoulder. “Do you think they speak Rulidian?”

            I frowned.

            “Would they have yelled at us in that language if they did?” I asked.

            The man walked over to me and, to my utter shock, grasped me by the collar of my shirt.

            “Eugeo!”

            He pointed a finger at the object.

            “ _Dafaix tux qo? Rih jyk lawux!_ ”

            I blinked at him.

            “I…I’m sorry…I don’t…understand.”

            He turned to the man on his left and said something. They bickered back and forth for a few seconds before he turned back to me.

            “Danger.”

            “You speak Rulidian?”

            His face scrunched up. He was having as much difficulty understanding me as I was him. He shook his head and pointed to Alice.

            “ _Rah…_ ”

            He was indicating her. I gave him a nod to let him know I understood. He waved his hand in the direction of Rulid.

            “ _Rah or dho muilyx lavahx._ ”

            So, he wanted Alice to leave. I nodded again. He then jabbed a finger into my chest.

            “ _Tux dayulk, dono rolyot tuxin._ ”

            He gestured to the spot we were standing in.

            “Alice, I think he wants you to leave, but me to stay,” I said.

            We shared a glance. She shook her head.

            “I’m not leaving you here!” she said. “Why does he want you here? Can you understand him?”

            I shook my head.

            “Not really, but I’m making guesses based off of his gestures and over-annunciation,” I said. “He pointed at you and then at Rulid, and then waved his hand. I think he wants you to leave. But then he pointed at me and pointed at this spot.”

            Alice took a step closer to me.

            “No!”

            That command came from the man behind the one holding me. He waved his hands.

            “No! Woman go. Man stay.”

            “D-do you speak some Rulidian?” I asked.

            The other man frowned as well.

            “Little.”

            “Why do you want me to stay?” I asked.

            He didn’t appear to understand. This was going nowhere. I didn’t want to stay without a clear reason, but they were bigger, stronger, and didn’t want me to go anywhere. Alice wouldn’t budge unless she knew I was safe, but with the language barrier, there was no way of knowing if I’d be safe if she left. Frustrated, I tried to pull away from the man.

            “ _Roh ji dha retropelet dabaxul, Dharlim_ ,” the man further from me said.

            The man holding me raised an eyebrow and looked from me to the object. He shook his head.

            “ _Tusik, liyh aivtali bohixi jyk ina awux,_ ” he responded.

            “Please, I was just curious, let us go back to our village,” I said. “We won’t come back. We won’t, I promise.”

            Frowning, the man who knew more Rulidian marched over to us, yanked me out of the first man’s grasp, and dragged me over to the object. He held me over the watery surface and then locked eyes with Alice.

            “ _Davahx!_ ”

            Alice took another step closer. The man pushed me closer to the humming surface. I felt my heart start to race in my chest. The fact that he held me over this surface meant that it wasn’t safe. He was trying to threaten Alice, but Alice didn’t know what this was. She couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t just tricking us. I couldn’t either—this could be a perfectly safe body of water, but he was trying to play the advantage of us not knowing what the object was.

            “Let him go!” Alice exclaimed. “Let Eugeo go!”

            “ _Davahx! Otori! Davahx or_ Rulid!”

            She nodded.

            “Yes, we’re from Rulid!” she said. “Just let us go back!”

            Clearly not getting what he wanted, the man stopped shouting a command we couldn’t understand. He threw me backwards into the object. I tried to grab onto the edge, but it was too far away to grasp. Alice screamed my name. The other man was upset, also screaming. Sound became muffled as I fell into the substance.

            It didn’t quite feel like water. It felt a lot like static and pressure. It had to be some kind of liquid, though, because I could feel it flowing through my hair and clothing. I tried to swim out of it, but something felt as if it were dragging me to the bottom. I held my breath for as long as I could, but eventually, I felt forced to gasp. The liquid entered my nose and throat. It burned.

            _I’m going to drown_ , I thought.

            My lungs felt like they were on fire. They tried to expel the foreign substance and replace it with oxygen, but the only thing available for them to intake was this murky liquid. I felt my head starting to get light. I weakly reached up, as if that would do anything, hoping that an arm would reach down and grab mine to save me.

            But no one reached for me. My vision blacked out. I felt pain. I felt tired.

            And then, I felt nothing.

            That was the last thing I remembered.

            Now, I’m staring at a blurry scene. Someone’s talking. It’s freezing. Extremely freezing. That’s about all I can feel. There’s a person standing really close to me—I know that much. The world shifts. No…I’m moving. I’m _being_ moved. The speech becomes clearer.

            “You think he’s alive?”

            “Hell if I know.”

            “He’s got a pulse.”

            “No fucking way. There’s no fucking way he’s got a pulse. Quit messing with me.”

            “I’m dead serious! When I press my ear to his chest, there’s a pulse!”

            “Wait, seriously?”

            Sensation is returning, albeit slowly. Someone must have pulled me out of that weird pool. Alice likely ran for help. I wonder if there was a translator somewhere who helped to clear things up. So long as Alice was safe, that was all that mattered to me.

            Suddenly, bright light filled my vision.

            “A…ah!”

            My body jolted back to life. I jerked upright into a sitting position.

            “Holy shit!”

            “Kirito, what did you _do_?”

            “I didn’t do _anything_ he just SAT UP!”

            I blinked and rubbed my eyes. Bright colors filled my vision as if I’d stared directly into the sun. They took a minute to adjust. What I saw wasn’t Rulid. It was dark. Not so dark that I couldn’t see anything, but dark. Ice formations covered what looked like a cave. I turned my head and saw three people staring at me, wide-eyed.

            They were dressed weirdly. Skin-tight clothing that didn’t tie on. It looked slick, as if they were wet. One wore black. One wore red. One wore purple. Two of the three appeared to be women from their physique.

            “Hey…buddy…can you understand me?”

            The guy received a slap from the woman in red.

            “Don’t baby talk him, he looks like he’s at least eighteen!” she said.

            I was relieved, at least, that I could answer that question this time. These people must be the bilinguals.

            “Yes, I’m sorry,” I said.

            My throat hurt. It hurt to speak.

            “You speak Rulidian, then?” I said. “Thank goodness. The others didn’t. They just kept yelling…uh, ‘davache’ or something…”

            The woman in purple tilted her head.

            “Did you say _davahx_?” she said. “That’s ancient Kyeaclae…you don’t think he’s a lost professor of linguistics, do you?”

            “And why do you know a word in ancient Kyeaclae, Yuuki?” the guy asked. “That’s such a random bit of knowledge.”

            “You don’t know everything about me,” she huffed. “Besides, my family comes from a line of clerics. We have to know it for liturgical reasons. But that’s weird that he would know it if he’s not also a cleric or a linguistics person.”

            The guy shrugged.

            “Maybe someone _did_ say that to him,” he suggested.

            “Either way, whether he’s confused or pulling our leg or actually telling the truth, we need to bring him back to the lab,” the woman in red said.

            She turned to me.

            “Hey, me and my wife and friend are going to take you back with us to get some help,” she said. “Don’t try to stand up on your own.”

            The guy in black promptly scooped me up in his arms. I helplessly glanced up at him. His eyes and hair were as dark as his outfit. There was a little pink in his cheeks.

            “You…have really pretty eyes,” he said quietly.

            “Where…where am I?” I finally asked.

            The woman in purple smiled down at me.

            “We’ll try to sort this out when you wake up, okay?” she said.

            I blinked.

            “When I what?”

            She jabbed something sharp into my shoulder. I let out a yelp in surprise. I wanted to ask her what that was for, but my entire body started to go limp. My eyes rolled into the back of my head, submitting once again to the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So, don't try to Google Translate that stuff- you won't get a hit! That's a conlang, and not just a random one I found online; it's an old final project for a linguistics course. What those unnamed OCs are saying is completely made up by me, but if you're curious: 
> 
> “Oi, gorere wux!” - "Hey, be careful!"  
> “Dafaix tux qo? Rih jyx lawux!” - "What are you doing? It's dangerous!"  
> “Rah or dho muilyx lavahx.” - "She goes home." (A command).  
> “Tux dayulk, dono rolyot tuxin.” - "You stay, please."  
> “Roh ji dha retropelet dabaxul, Dharlim.” - "Throw him in the [object's name], Dharlim."  
> “Tusik, liyh aivtali bohixi jyk ina awux.” - "I don't like that idea."  
> “Davahx! Otori! Davahx or Rulid!” - "Go! Now! Go to Rulid!"


	2. Examination

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: It has been a hot second and I apologize for that. But I've solemnly sworn not to abandon ANY fics. Nothing is being ditched no matter how long it takes me to write! (I do apologize for the waits, though, since I'm doing 10 all at once.)

            When my eyes opened up again, my vision was blurry and I was staring up at a white sky. After a few blinks, my vision focused. The sky wasn’t a sky, but a ceiling. I turned my head and saw the woman in purple from before standing over me. She reached over, turned my head so that I was staring up at the ceiling again, and then held a light so close to my left eye that it temporarily blinded me.

            “Gah!”

            I tried to bolt away from the table, but my body was stopped by her hand.

            “Whoa, easy, buddy,” she said. “I’m just checking your eyes. They seem to be working fine, despite the fact that you were frozen solid.”

            The light moved from my left to my right. The burning sensation of the blinding light wore off after a few seconds, but stars danced in my vision. The woman offered me a hand. I took it, frowning at her, and she pulled me into a sitting position. I glanced down at myself and felt my cheeks heat up. I was completely naked.

            “It doesn’t make sense, you seem to be perfectly fine,” she said. “Do you remember what happened before you ended up frozen in that ice?”

            I gave her a funny look. Were we really going to have a conversation like this while I was completely naked? Awkwardly, I placed my hands over my lap and swallowed. I didn’t recall any ice. I shook my head.

            “No, I just fell through that…that wall of water.”

            She lifted one eyebrow.

            “Wall of water?” she repeated. “Like…a waterfall? You walked through a waterfall, maybe?”

            I shook my head again.

            “Like, a water wall,” I said. “Laying on its side. A big door or something, but it was made of water that looked like the night sky. I couldn’t understand the men talking to me and Alice, so one of them threw me into the big water wall.”

            Her brow furrowed in concentration.

            “Tell me, stranger,” she said. “When is it?”

            I blinked at her. What kind of a question was that?

            “You mean like…it’s summer. It’s summer right now.”

            Sighing, she shook her head.

            “No, not what season is it,” she said. “What _year_ is it?”

            All I could do was stare at her ruby-colored eyes. She said that like years had names. I didn’t know what specific year it was. Maybe this was something they did here. When I didn’t give a response, she drew in a breath and tried a different question.

            “Okay, how about this,” she said. “Where are you from?”

            “Rulid,” I said.

            Her face paled a little.

            “I beg your pardon?” she said.

            I shifted uncomfortably. I really wanted my clothing back.

            “Rulid,” I said. “It’s a small village in the north. Barely a hundred people. Mostly farmers. A little church. Haven’t you heard of it?”

            She swallowed. Her head slowly nodded.

            “I might want to check your head again, I think you’ve had a concussion,” she said.

            She walked over to the wall on my right and picked up a device. She held it up to her mouth and spoke to it.

            “I think he’s hit his head,” she said. “He thinks he’s from Rulid. Could you possibly send Kirito in here, babe? He seems a bit uncomfortable with me being female. He’s got his hands over his lap like it’s embarrassing for a doctor to see—what? I have a medical degree, Asuna! It’s not weird!”

            When I realized she was talking about the fact that I was covering myself up to be decent, I felt heat in my cheeks. Of course, when I’d been unconscious, she’d already seen everything. I was only hiding because I was awake and aware that she could see me. I scanned the strange room, looking for any sign of my clothing. A piece of cloth was draped over a chair in the corner.

            Carefully, I slipped off of the thing I was sitting on and felt my bare feet touch the floor. It was freezing cold. I yelped in surprise, alerting the woman in purple to my movement. She dropped the device in her hand and hurried over to me. My head felt light and my knees gave out. I felt my body collapse into her arms. Now I felt even worse.

            “Hey, you can’t be moving around, okay?” she said gently. “You were trapped under there for at _least_ ten days, if not more. We need to get some food in you before you try to walk around, okay? You do understand me, right? You speak my language just fine.”

            I gave her a slight nod. The door behind her opened up, revealing the guy in black. He let out a low whistle and averted his eyes.

            “You did _not_ warn me that he’d be naked, Yuuki,” he said.

            The woman huffed.

            “Don’t be crass, Kirito!” she said. “Help me get him back up on the examination table, will you? He’s pretty heavy.”

            “Of course,” he said.

            Together, and to my utter humiliation, they sat me back up on the table and now were both gazing at me. The woman called Yuuki kept putting cold metal and glass objects against me, saying she was checking on different body parts both internally and externally.

            “Do you remember your name?” Kirito asked.

            Turning my gaze to him, I first wanted to ask why everyone thought I had forgotten myself and hit my head really hard, but the way he seemed genuinely curious made me stop. His eyes looked me up and down, taking in every bit of me like I was fascinating and new.

            “Eugeo,” I said.

            “Hmm?”

            “My name,” I said. “It’s Eugeo.”

            “And you think you’re from Rulid?”

            I frowned. The way they said that, it sounded like they didn’t believe in Rulid. But it obviously wasn’t a fictional place. It was where I was born and raised. I glanced over at Yuuki, and then back to Kirito. He spoke again.

            “I meant it, you know,” he said. “You’ve got pretty eyes.”

            “I…of course I’m from Rulid,” I said.

            Kirito shook his head, like someone so amazed they could barely believe what they were hearing.

            “You woke up speaking ancient Kyeaclae and you think you’re from Rulid,” he said. “You really are curious. Well, Eugeo, my name’s Kirigaya Kazuto, I’m the security guard for the Konnos. You can just call me Kirito, though. It’s like a nickname.”

            “A nickname…” I muttered.

            “And I’m sure you’ve met the lovely Dr. Konno Yuuki,” he continued. “She’s on the medical side. Her wife, Dr. Konno Asuna, is like, an archaeologist I guess. They both work for important people, they just pay me to do the dangerous stuff, like drag you out of a block of ice and such.”

            I subconsciously rubbed my arms.

            “Oh, um, where are my clothes?” I asked.

            “What clothes?” Kirito asked. “You were naked as a jaybird when we found you.”

            Suddenly, my embarrassment increased. Why? Where had my clothing even gone? I’d only fallen through that strange pool and woken up in that cold cave. At what point did I manage to lose all of my clothing?

            Laughing, Kirito reached into a back and pulled out a pair of pants and a shirt. He handed them to me. I gave him a wary glance. He nodded and pushed them towards me.

            “Go on,” he said. “You’re about my size. They should fit. Unless you want to remain naked, which is fine by me.”

            “Kirito, I’m trying to conduct a medical examination, where exactly are your eyes?” Yuuki grumbled.

            “Nowhere!” he said, immediately averting his gaze.

            Yuuki rolled her eyes.

            “Damn bisexual flirt,” she muttered. “Don’t feel too weirded out. He mostly thinks he’s funny. He’s secretly just lonely because his ex-girlfriend became my wife and now he’s just blindly casting out his line, trying to reel in whatever fish’ll bite.”

            “Hey!” Kirito said. “I am not that desperate!”

            I took the clothing out of Kirito’s outstretched hand and tried to figure out how to put it on.

            “Oh, then why were you trying to flirt after you saw the full package, huh?” Yuuki asked, smirking.

            I had no clue what full package she was talking about, but based on the teasing sound of her voice, it didn’t mean anything I wanted to know about. These people were a bit over the top. They were my only shot at finding a way back to Alice, though. Unless I could find someone who knew how to send me back.

            “I wasn’t checking out his dick!” Kirito defended.

            “Um.”

            “And here I was talking about his abs,” Yuuki huffed.

            “Um, guys…”

            “Of course, you meant the abs, I’m sorry,” Kirito said. “And that’s precisely what I was looking at.”

            Yuuki snorted.

            “You already made it very clear you were staring at his dick.”

            “Guys?”

            The two glanced over at Eugeo. Kirito smiled, as if he hadn’t been saying anything weird moments before.

            “Hey, those really do fit you,” he said. “I hope they’re comfortable. They’re all I can lend you until we get to a store or find out where your house is. Which, if you don’t mind and think you can remember, we can get you home really fast so long as we know your home address.”

            I shook my head. Nothing they were asking from me made any sense. It was like they simply refused to believe I was from Rulid. Home address? What did that mean? All they had to do was take me back to my village. They spoke my language, so why didn’t they understand where Rulid was?

            “I already told you where I’m from,” I said. “I’m from Rulid. And I would like to get back as soon as possible. I think…I think my friend is in trouble.”

            The two gave each other a worried glance. Kirito mumbled something inaudible to Yuuki. She nodded in my direction and waved him over to me. He sighed, looked back at me with sad eyes, and then stepped in front of me. He took me by the shoulders. For a moment, he stared down at the floor. Then, he lifted his head so our eyes met.

            “Eugeo,” he said. “Rulid’s just a name in history books. That village was wiped out centuries ago. The Kyeaclae people settled in and killed them all off. And then, after that, the Kajik conquered and killed off most of them. And the cycle repeated itself for centuries until we are finally at peace today. I don’t know why you think you’re from Rulid, but we have to clear this all up before people think you’re crazy, okay?”

            I jerked myself away from him, stumbling backwards into the wall behind me. Both Kirito and Yuuki tried to grab ahold of me, but I shook them off and scrambled backwards away from them.

            “Hey, calm down,” Kirito said. “We just wanna help. That’s all.”

            “You’re lying!” I shouted.

            They both straightened up. I shook my head.

            “You’re lying! My parents! My brothers! My sister! Alice!” I cried. “They’re alive! I saw them yesterday! I was with Alice just before I woke up, they’re not dead!”

            “Yuuki, you might want to sedate him…” Kirito said.

            “Alice…Alice…they couldn’t!”

            Those men. Could it be possible? Did those men kill everyone in my village?

            “I have to go back!” I screamed. “Let me go back! Alice! I have to save Alice!”

            I tried to get up, but Kirito held me down firmly. My body still didn’t want to cooperate with me. I flailed about, trying to break out of his grasp. He glanced back over his shoulder to Yuuki, who was fiddling with something.

            “Any day now, Yuuki,” Kirito said.

            “Alice! Let me go back for Alice!”

            “Grab his arm and try to hold him still,” Yuuki said.

            I felt Kirito roughly grasp my wrist and pull my arm out to its full length. I tried to fight him. His grip was too strong, and I was too fatigued. Something pricked my skin close to the inside of my elbow. Kirito finally let go of me. I tried to stand up. My limbs protested. After a few seconds, however, I felt woozy.

            “Alice…Alice…I’m coming…”

            My body gave out. I only caught pieces of what they were saying as my consciousness faded, but I internalized it as best I could.

            “Don’t let him out of your sight,” Yuuki said. “If he finds his way to the Rulid ruins, we’ll be in a world of trouble.”

            “I got it, I got it,” Kirito said.

            So. Rulid was in ruins, huh? At least that meant that I could go and find some answers when I woke back up.


	3. Strike a Deal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Did someone say "stop drugging Eugeo to knock him out"? Oh, that was me. To me. Hmph. No Eugeos were harmed in the making of this fanfiction. 
> 
> Ok. That's a lie.

            Darkness filled my vision so completely that I wasn’t sure I’d woken up at all. I hope that this method of being forced to go to sleep wouldn’t be used very often. I sat up and felt around. I was laying on something soft that gave a little when I put my weight on it—it had to be a mattress, but it didn’t feel like any I’d ever slept on before. A blanket covered me up to the base of my ribcage. I blinked a few times. My eyes adjusted to the dark.

            The room I was in was bigger than me and my brothers’ room back in Rulid. It had a desk on the far wall, a dresser for clothing, and a small table beside the bed I was laying on. There was a window above my head, casting pale moonlight down onto the foot of the bed. To my right, a  closed door had a slight bit of light coming from beneath it. I pulled the blanket off my body and stepped out of the bed.

            My legs wobbled. Of course, they did. I hadn’t eaten anything since they’d found me. But I didn’t know where to find food and was on a mission. Before I’d blacked out, Yuuki had mentioned Rulid’s ruins. As much as I didn’t want to believe that my home was in ruins, I had to find a way to get to my home and see what was going on. I forced my body to comply, made it to the door, and stepped out into another room.

            This room was considerably bigger. It had several pieces of furniture that I wasn’t sure of the function of in the dim lighting, but the man known as Kirito was lying sprawled out on what looked like a long chair. His mouth was wide open, letting out an obnoxious snore. He must have been tired from dealing with me, so I could bet on him not waking up. Nevertheless, I tiptoed around the room, searching for another exit. There was one at the far end of the room. I approached the door and stumbled into something large. It rocked back and forth a moment before falling over and making a loud thud.

            Kirito, to my shock, practically threw himself off of the couch with a yelp. He, too, slammed into the floor. Grumbling came from his direction. I wrapped my hand around the doorknob and pulled. The door wouldn’t budge. I squinted and saw a few odd things jutting out of the space above the knob. I fiddled with those, hearing clicks as I moved them.

            “Eu-Eugeo, you stay put!” I heard Kirito call.

            “Yeah, right…” I muttered.

            The door finally allowed me to open it. I yanked it open and stumbled out of the door several meters before stopping and staring at what was in front of me. An entire world at night, set ablaze by myriad colorful, dancing lights, stood before me, giant and imposing. I couldn’t discern between the night sky and the world itself. Were those buildings? And what were those objects whizzing past a few meters in front of me? People hurried by on the hard path beneath my feet.

            “Where…where am I?”

            “Eugeo!”

            I took several cautious steps forward into the main flow of human traffic. A man bumped into me, then turned around and swore, telling me to watch where I was going. People gave me unpleasant looks as I pushed through them, trying to look for something I could recognize. Nothing looked like the world I’d grown up in. No trees, no simple stone-built homes, no dirt paths—nothing. The way people dressed didn’t match what Kirito and Yuuki and Asuna had been wearing, but it still was so different from the clothing I was familiar with that I wasn’t sure what to call each article I laid eyes on. I tripped over something in the path and landed on the hard surface, managing to scrape up my hands and knees.

            “Owww…”

            “Oi, kid, you just knocked over all my wares!”

            Swallowing, I turned my head back to see a very large man with dark skin and a bald head gesturing to whatever I’d just knocked over by tripping. I shakily got up and tried to help him pick whatever up.

            “I-I’m sorry!”

            “Agil! You caught a wild Eugeo!”

            Kirito sauntered over and patted the larger man on the shoulder. He received a sharp glare, but he wasn’t yelled at for bothering him. The man looked back over at me and jabbed a finger in my direction.

            “Are you telling me clueless blondie is with you?”

            Kirito nodded.

            “Uh, yeah,” he said. “He’s uh…a foreigner. He’s helping Yuuki and Asuna with the excavation of the Rulid ruins. Ya know. Scientist things.”

            “ _Him_?” Agil stressed.

            He received another nod from Kirito, who walked over and picked me up from under the arms. I tried to squirm out of his grasp, but once again, my lack of energy lost to Kirito’s iron grip. I gave up and went limp.

            “Is your friend there drunk?” Agil asked.

            A sarcastic-sounding laugh burst out of Kirito’s mouth.

            “Possibly.”

            I started squirming again.

            “I am not drunk!” I protested.

            Kirito patted my head.

            “Sure, buddy, sure,” he said. “Well, see you around Agil, sorry about my friend messing up your sale table. I really should get him back inside. Get him some water. Maybe a snack. Let’s go back in the house, Eugeo.”

            “Put me down,” I said.

            I’d intended for it to sound more forceful and demanding, but I was more fatigued than I’d thought. It came out sounded just slurred enough that Agil most likely believed I was drunk. He’d be none the wiser. Kirito started to drag me back towards the house I’d run out of.

            “Hey! No! You come clean up after your friend, Kirito!”

            “Sorry, I have a drunk guy to take care of!”

            “KIRITO, YOU BASTARD!”

            Kirito chuckled as he slipped me back into the house and closed the door, being sure to set all of those things back to where they’d been before I’d started messing with them. He hit something that made a light fill the room and helped me over to a chair that was sitting at a table. He told me to not move, then disappeared through another door I hadn’t previously seen. When he returned, he put a plate of warm food in front of me and a glass of water.

            “For starters, let’s get some food in your belly,” he said, taking a seat across from me.

            He slid a fork and knife over to me. I stared down at the food and frowned. I didn’t feel up to eating, but my lack of energy wouldn’t go away unless I ate. I picked up the fork and stabbed at the food. I popped it in my mouth. The moment the flavor of the vegetables I’d placed on my tongue hit me, I almost cried, realizing how famished I was. Ignoring any form of manners, I started to shovel food into my mouth.

            “Yeah. That’s what I thought,” Kirito said, chuckling.

            As if realizing something, he got up out of his chair and went back into the other room. He came back with another plate and an oddly shaped cup. The plate he shoved towards me. Without a second thought, I moved the now-empty plate from in front of me and snatched the second one to keep shoveling food in my mouth. He shook his head and took a swig out of the oddly shaped cup.

            “Look, I know this is scary for you, but we’re not the bad guys, here, Eugeo,” he said, waving a finger at me. “We want to help. We do. But you have to trust us. And based on the way you just tried to bolt out of my front door into a busy street in Zakkaria, of all places, I get the feeling that you don’t.”

            I froze, with food still stuffed in my cheeks, and blinked at him.

            “Vuhkaweea?”

            “Yes, Zakkaria,” he said. “I think that name’s stuck around as one of the few since ancient times, so if you’re still on ancient brain, you might recognize the city.”

            _That_ was Zakkaria? There was no way. I’d visited once with Alice’s family. Zakkaria might have been a bigger town than Rulid, which was a small village, but calling that busy amalgamation of lights and towers and fast-moving objects Zakkaria seemed a stretch.

            I shook my head, swallowing what was in my mouth.

            “I don’t recall Zakkaria looking like that,” I said.

            Kirito sighed and wrapped his fingers around the cup. His expression looked hurt.

            “Say, what’s ‘excavation,’ then?” I asked, changing the subject.

            He perked back up, blinking at me.

            “Uh, like, digging up,” he said. “Why?”

            “You told that Agil fellow that I was helping work on the ‘excavation of Rulid’ with your lesbian friends,” I said.

            “Did you just call Asuna and Yuuki my ‘lesbian friends,’ Eugeo?”

            “Why are you digging up Rulid?”

            He sighed.

            “It’s a historical site,” he said. “Historians and archaeologists like Asuna excavate ruins to find out more about the culture of people who lived there. Like, what sorts of tools…they…used…”

            He blinked a few more times.

            “You’re _positive_ you come from Rulid?”

            I nodded.

            “More positive than you people will give me credit for,” I said. “It’s my birthplace. I would recognize it even in ruins if I saw it. I know to you all it sounds like madness, but on the other side of that water wall was Rulid. The Rulid I know. Alive and well. And I intend to go back there.”

            Kirito shifted in his seat.

            “But if you’re really from Rulid, you’ll know the answers to things we’ve been trying to crack for hundreds of years about the people of Rulid and why they might have been targeted for genocide by the Kyeaclae. Hey, why don’t we make a deal, huh?”

            I narrowed my eyes and took another bite of food.

            “A deal?”

            He grinned and nodded.

            “Yeah, a deal,” he said. “Maybe more like a trade. You help us learn some things about the culture of Rulid. I help you get back to the Rulid you know. Simple as that. After all, you have some Alice chick waiting for you, right? Who’s that, your wife?”

            He took another sip of his drink. I rolled my eyes.

            “I haven’t proposed to her yet,” I said.

            Choking sounds came from across the table.

            “I need to get back and tell her how I feel,” I said. “What if some other guy comes along and confesses to her first? While I’m here in fake-Zakkaria talking to some guy with a weird cup and eating all of his food, I could have already lost my chance with this girl!”

            Kirito frowned and stared at me, relatively uninterested.

            “Tragic.”

            “Oh, it’s not like you would get it.”

            He snorted.

            “My ex-girlfriend left me for our mutual friend and is currently married to her,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “You think I don’t get girl trouble? But listen. While I’m not here to wing-man for you, I swear I will do what I can to get you back to the Rulid you know. Even if you time-travelled or something, I’ll help you figure it out so you can go offer a ring to this girl, okay? So, stop freaking out when you come to and agree to help us help you.”

            I frowned down at what was left on the plate of food in front of me. This seemed like the only way to even get to investigate what I wanted. I’d have to play nice and go along with Kirito’s deal. I held my hand out to him to shake on it. He reached over and grasped my hand, giving me a friendly smile.

            “But the moment there’s a way back, you’ll tell me,” I said.

            His brow knit ever-so-slightly.

            “Of course,” he said.

            “Then you’ve got a deal.”


	4. The Other Side

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Um. Short chapter. Wasn't sure if I should do it like this or not, but I think it would be confusing to just show Eugeo's side of things when I DO have stuff happening on Alice's side. Time to get confusing.

            “Eugeo! Eugeo!”

            The man roughly grasped her my the arm and threw her onto the ground. He still wasn’t speaking in a language she understood. They were just as freaked out about the result of their actions as Alice was, even if they panicked for entirely different reasons. They’d tossed Eugeo into the large mysterious pool and from their angle, it had looked as if the matter inside of it had wrapped itself around the boy and sucked him in, leaving not a trace of him behind. The men pointed and shouted at the surface.

            “Eugeo…” Alice cried.

            A third man walked up to the scene and started to shout at the two pointing into the pool. They lowered their heads and appeared to explain the situation to him. He yelled at them a little more, sent them away, and then turned to Alice. She jumped to her feet and began to backpedal. He held out one hand and gave her an apologetic look.

            “Wait, miss, I studied your language!” he said. “I’m willing to clear up any of the misconduct my employees have done which has caused you grief. I am sorry about your friend. I hope you’ll come sit in my tent and hear me out. What’s your name, dear?”

            Alice frowned at him. His voice didn’t give away whether or not he was lying, but he did speak her language. She gave him a curt nod.

            “I’ll go with you, but if I find you untrustworthy, I will return home and inform the elders of what you’ve done to Eugeo,” she said. “And my name is Alice.”

            The man raised an eyebrow and then glanced back at the pool.

            “Again, please allow me to explain,” he said. “Come with me.”

            He took her over to what he called the tent. She glanced around. It was a larger space on the inside than she’d expected, and it was filled with equipment and furniture that she only had the vaguest of ideas what their function was. He waved for her to sit down in front of him, giving a nervous nod in her direction. She gathered up her skirt and sat down, staring at him with untelling eyes.

            “My name is Kikuoka Seijirou,” he said, clearing his throat. “I represent the Military Defense Board of the Norlangarth Empire.”

            “Norlangarth is merely a piece of the Human Empire,” Alice said, narrowing her eyes. “It is not an empire on its own. That you claim to represent Norlangarth suggests that you are, in fact, trying to deceive me.”

            He shook his head.

            “Listen, child,” he said. “I’m not from this Norlangarth; you’ve even expressed this yourself. I’m from, what you will, an alternate timeline.”

            Alice frowned even deeper.

            “I study the sacred arts under the Axiom Church,” she said. “Time is not something humans can control.”

            “Don’t be so foolish as to believe that,” Kikuoka said. “I’m here working with a group of Kyeaclae portal-builders, the gentlemen who so rudely tossed your friend into the active water wall.”

            At this, Alice perked up.

            “Eugeo called it that, too,” she said. “He seemed to think it was meant to stand upright.”

            Kikuoka nodded, smiling a little. Alice made sure to give him an icy glare. His smile vanished just as quickly as it had come. She wasn’t going to let him control her like this. He had to know his place.

            “Will Eugeo be okay?” she asked.

            He hummed.

            “I cannot give a definite answer,” he said quietly. “Like I said, the water wall was active. There’s no telling where your friend ended up without coordinates to guide him. Traveling through time requires coordinates just like any other form of travel. You must have a destination. However, with time travel, you are jumping into an active stream that can take you anywhere if you don’t specify.”

            “No!” she said, standing to her feet. “Where did you send him?! There must be a way to know where you sent him!”

            She marched over to the man and tried to extend herself to his height. He took a step back and adjusted the spectacles on his face.

            “If I knew how to find him and retrieve him, I would have done it already!” Kikuoka said. “But I will do my best to try and trace the trajectory of his journey. I put a few men to it. Don’t worry so much.”

            A younger man with dark hair, eyes, and clothing hurried in and immediately thrust something out to Kikuoka.

            “You would not _believe_ where they sent that guy!”

            Kikuoka choked on his own air and began to splutter. He’d just spouted off at Alice that it would be difficult to track Eugeo down, but this mischievous-looking youngster seemed to have located him almost instantly after he’d said that. The man turned around to Alice and flashed her a confident smile.

            “Oh, hey, who’s this?”

            “Kirigaya, don’t bother her,” he said. “Did you really find the kid we’re looking for?”

            “Of course, I did!” he responded, looking slightly offended. “We got right to it!”

            Alice blinked over at him and frowned.

            “We?” she said.

            The flap of the tent opened, revealing another man who looked the same age as this dark-haired fellow named Kirigaya. Alice felt her chest tighten up. He walked right over Kirigaya and Kikuoka, his arms crossed and a clear frown etched into his brow. Kirigaya chuckled, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and then, to Alice’s embarrassment and shock, planted a kiss on his cheek.

            “Kirito, behave!”

            “Oh, Alice, please meet my two best technician interns,” Kikuoka said, beaming proudly like a father presenting his sons to their new master when they received their calling. “Kirigaya Kazuto with the black hair, and his husband, Kirigaya Eugeo, the one with the flaxen hair.”

            Alice locked eyes with the spitting image of her friend and felt her mouth open and close several times as if shocked.

            “They’re newlyweds, please excuse their inappropriate conduct,” he added.

            “What inappropriate conduct?” Kazuto asked.

            He promptly reached down and grasped his husband’s rear.

            “KIRITO!” Eugeo exclaimed.

            “I…I don’t…understand…” Alice stammered.

            The three men looked at her strangely.

            “Eugeo…just…he just fell through the…he’s not…who’s…?”

            This other Eugeo raised his eyebrows and gave Kikuoka a look.

            “Are you suggesting that the friend who fell through the active water wall is, in fact, this timeline’s Eugeo?” Kikuoka said. “Fascinating…there’s two of you!”  
            The other Eugeo simply looked ghastly. He must have had the same uneasy feeling as Alice—knowing that there existed two of the same person, but with different memories and lifestyles.

            “What’s going on?” she asked, her voice wavering.

            She glanced at the three men and swallowed.

            “Why are you here?”


	5. Rulid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hm. I stared at this too long and finally decided it needs to be posted.

            In the morning, Kirito insisted that I eat a big, filling breakfast before we headed out. I was rather hasty about it, which he found amusing. We both dressed and headed out to a weirdly shaped object he referred to as a car. This car was essentially a metal and glass enclosed self-driving carriage. The wheels were made of some kind of black soft-but-solid substance he swore was rubber. The interior seats were upholstered. He had a wheel sticking out of the right side that he said steered it. We had to put belts across our bodies to hold us in place.

            He drove the car over to another area. Asuna and Yuuki, the lesbian couple I’d first seen him with, slipped into the backseat, telling him good morning in cheery voices. They both greeted me as well; I waved, unsure of what else to do or say. My mind was focused on our destination. I wondered if the two women knew we were headed to what Kirito claimed was the ruins of my home village.

            The drive took a good hour and a half. He’d explained that the ruins were outside of the city, but close enough that they didn’t have to camp out around the site all of the time. I tuned most of what he said out. I was too busy watching the weird new world fly past me. My heart ached as I gazed at the tall buildings that looked so alien to me.

            That view changed as we got closer to the site of Rulid’s ruins. I didn’t want to believe Kirito; I wanted to drive up to that place and see my home, intact and with Alice waiting for me with opened arms. But his words rang true. The landscape I saw as we pulled up looked like a city after war had torn it to pieces.

            The car came to a stop at the entrance to a gated area. We all climbed out of the car. Asuna and Yuuki walked around to one side. They were talking to Kirito in what sounded like angry whispers. I saw Yuuki point at me and then at the gate. Kirito threw up his hands, started gesticulating wildly, and then pressed all of his fingers to his chest. He broke away from the group and waved me over to him.

            “Come on, Eugeo,” he said. “Let’s go take a look and see if you can help us with any of this _important research_ we have to do in order to _get paid_.”

            I gave him an unamused glare.

            “Trust me, they’ll both want to correct me by letting me know I’m just a body guard and they’ll also be curious about what kind of knowledge you have about the place,” he said. “Especially Asuna. Yuuki’s the medical person. Asuna’s the fancy dig-up-history gal.”

            “Kirito, _what_ did you just call me?” Asuna huffed.

            He turned around and flashed her a grin.

            “Come on,” he said. “Open it up. Let him in. We might have a real Rulidian on our hands! He can help!”

            Asuna cast me a skeptical frown. Kirito had been rather quick to accept my story. To me, it was obvious that I was right. But to these people, I sounded like a lunatic. It would take more than just my word for them to believe I was really from Rulid. I’d see just how difficult that task would be as soon as I knew what the current Rulid looked like.

            I glanced at the gate, feeling my stomach turn. I didn’t want to see my home in ruins. The more I thought about it, the less I wanted to confirm that Rulid was a pile of rubble currently being dug up so people could find out what happened to it. An indescribable sorrow filled my chest before the gates even opened. I wanted to go home. I wanted that gate to open and reveal Alice, dashing towards me with her arms open wide.

            “He’s not from here,” Asuna said curtly.

            Nevertheless, she moved past him and stepped in front of the locked gate. She pulled a key out of her pocket and slipped it into the lock. It turned and the release produced a solid clunk. Yuuki dashed up beside her wife, slipped her arm around Asuna’s, and smiled up at her as she opened the gate.

            “It’s a little difficult to open with you hanging on my arm,” Asuna said.

            Yuuki beamed up at her.

            “This proves just how talented you are!” she said.

            She hopped up and gave Asuna a quick peck on the cheek before they walked through the gate. Kirito looked at me and smirked. I narrowed my eyes when he offered me an arm. As if I’d walk through the gate like that with him when the married couple in front of us was doing the same thing. We weren’t on a date and we certainly weren’t married. Did he think he was being funny? I rolled my eyes and followed the women.

            “Awe…come on, Eugeo,” he said. “I’m trying to help lighten the mood.”

            I shook my head.

            “I don’t want to lighten the mood if my entire village is dead,” I said.

            It came out more curt than I’d meant it to. His shoulders drooped a little. I didn’t want to be harsh to this guy I barely knew, but he clearly didn’t understand what this all meant for me. He found it exciting and mysterious—but this was horrifying and tasted like bitter medicine to me. He wasn’t the one about to look at his dead home.

            I shook my head again, this time, more drastically, and then marched into the gate behind Asuna and Yuuki. Kirito hurried along after me. After my first few steps, I stopped in my tracks and gazed out upon the site. The dread I’d been trying to stave off flooded into my heart. My stomach turned.

            This was definitely Rulid. I knew because I recognized everything, from the layout of the buildings to the style of the ruins that were crumbling in on themselves. It just looked so old and decrepit. I feared that if I reached out and pressed my finger to any of these tumbling walls, they might turn into dust. The cobblestone roads were so worn down it was hard to compare them to the paths I’d taken so many times as a child.

            My knees gave out, and I sank down into the dust, staring at the ruins. I couldn’t bring myself to cry. There was an emptiness filling my chest. I found my eyes staring down at the ground. A rough object sat near my knee. Numbly, I reached out and picked it up. The object was covered in mud. I took out my frustration at the sight of my home in shambles on the object by furiously rubbing my sleeve on it.

            It was then that I realized I wasn’t feeling empty about anything. I was angry. I was absolutely livid. Someone had destroyed my home. I’d been gone for so long that I could have done nothing about this—and I had no proof that this had happened within the lifetime of anyone I knew. But a burning desire boiled inside of me: I wanted to prevent this fate. I wanted to stop this. I wanted to save Alice from this tragedy, if I could.

            “Eugeo…I’m…I’m sorry…” Kirito said.

            He placed a hand on my shoulder so suddenly that I almost jumped. Unlike the two women, who were still looking at me quite skeptically, he expressed sympathy for my plight. I stared down at the object I’d slowly been uncovering. I swallowed. It was clearly some kind of child’s toy. I didn’t recognize it as any toy I knew, but it was a toy in its own right. Carved from wood, a simple shape.

 _Rulid’s children died here_.

            Children that very well might have been mine and Alice’s, had I not disappeared. Or, if I were to return and live out this timeline, it very well could be our child’s toy. I dropped it, finding myself sick to my stomach just imagining a possible child of mine being killed in a massacre of my village. I shook my head and pressed a hand to my mouth.

            “We’re trying to find out why,” Kirito said calmly. “Can you think of anyone or anything that was off when you were last in Rulid?”

            I shook my head. We were a peaceful village. No one bothered us and we bothered no one. I couldn’t think of anyone that held any hostility towards us. It had to be the circumstances of a war larger than we poor Rulidians could imagine being involved in. No one was being drafted to protect the village. No one was being trained. There was no word of threats from bigger cities like Zakkaria or Centoria.

            My shoulders tensed up. This didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t fair. He was asking me to fill in a question I wish I knew the answer to. Probably realizing his mistake, he raised his brow a little and then pulled me into a hug. I didn’t want comfort from this stranger, but strangely, I found myself clinging to his shirt as I began to sob.

            “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was insensitive of me.”

            He gently rubbed my back as I cried.

            “I promise I’ll do whatever I can so you can see your home alive and well again,” he said.

            His words, in the moment, felt like a breath of fresh air. The promise was a grand one. We had no idea how I’d gotten here aside from my report of having fallen through the water wall. But he sounded so sure of himself that I was foolish enough in my grief to cling to those words and believe them.

            I nodded my head, incapable of speaking. If nothing else, I could confide in the fact that Kirito would do everything in his power to get me home to Alice. And I’d give my own effort, too. I wasn’t going to let him be the hero. I had to get back to Rulid— _my_ Rulid—on my own two feet.


	6. Access

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Chapter time! Just before class! Yay! I hope it's decent.

            Kirito indicated that the first step to finding out what happened was to get access to data concerning the site I was found at. Not Rulid as a whole, but the exact pinpointed location they’d come across my body encased in ice. He seemed to think that information about that spot might clue us in as to how I’d gotten there—and once we knew that, we could clear up if there was a way to reverse that process.

            He took me back into the city to a facility, saying he needed to talk to his boss. I was still catching up with him on all of these fancy new words. Apparently, a facility was a large, squarish, ugly building that didn’t look as sleek and pretty as the rest of the ones in the city. It consisted of two floors and then a third one underground—basically, a basement.

            We stopped outside of a door on the basement floor. It had a window in it, and there was a little light coming from that window. Kirito lifted his hand up to a button beside the door. I tilted my head at him.

            “Is that what you do instead of knocking?” I asked.

            He blinked at me.

            “Oh, no,” he said. “Knocking’s still a thing.”

            “Then what was that with the little button thing?” I asked.

            “Ah—” he said, but he stopped when the door opened.

            A woman with short black hair and glasses stood in the doorway, giving Kirito a very stern look. She looked like she was about to yell at him when something very peculiar I’d never seen before happened. She started to wave her hands around, moving her fingers and hands into different positions so quickly I wasn’t sure what she was trying to do. She leaned into her hands and her movements were very clearly aiming irritation at him. He made an exaggerated scrunched up face and started doing similar, but much slower, hand motions back at her.

            “Um…”

            Kirito looked over at me. The woman waved one hand in his face, regaining his attention. He pointed at me and then made a few more hand signs. It seemed like a conversation. There were turns—he’d make motions, she’d make motions. Sometimes they made them over top of the other. They kept changing their expressions, all of which were very clearly representative of their tone. I cleared my throat. Kirito and the woman stopped and looked at me.

            “Sorry, she’s mad I let you into Rulid,” he said, laughing. “Uh, right. Eugeo, this is my boss, Asada Shino, but we just call her Sinon.”

            As he said her nickname, he made slow, emphasized motions with his hand.

            “N-nice to meet you,” I said, turning to her.

            “Oh, Eugeo, she can’t hear you,” Kirito said.

            I straightened up.

            “She’s deaf?” I said.

            He nodded.

            “If you want to tell her ‘nice to meet you,’ do this with your hands,” he said, showing me, once again, slow motions. “It’s called sign language. Maybe you didn’t have people speaking sign language in Rulid. It’s a very useful way to talk to deaf people.”

            That was actually the first thing I’d found in this strange futuristic world that I didn’t think was too weird. It was actually a useful thing. I slowly repeated his hand motions. The woman known as Sinon smiled at me and then said something back.

            “She’s pleased to meet you, too,” Kazuto said.

            “So, she has this data or whatever you’re looking for?” I asked.

            Cue another lengthy discussion in sign language that I couldn’t understand. Kazuto started saying his responses in both sign language and our language so that I could get the gist of what was going on. Basically, there had been some readings taken from the spot they’d found me at. I didn’t know what that meant, but I guessed that this was the data he was looking for. Sinon took us down the hall into a dark room filled with little glowing boxes.

            Kirito reached down and started tapping his fingers on what he called a keyboard. It made letters show up on the glowing box. He started poring over blocks of text that showed up in the box, with a significant frown on his face. Occasionally, Sinon would make a comment, and he’d grumble back a reply. Finally, when he expressed enough irritation at being interrupted, she grabbed me and pulled me over to an area with more light.

            I frowned at her, feeling bad that I didn’t know how to speak to her. She pulled out a notepad and wrote something down on it. She handed me the notepad. In big letters, it just said “Want to learn?” I blinked up at her, confused for a moment. She said something. I raised my eyebrows and then nodded.

            It kind of went slowly. She’d write something on the pad and then show me how to say it. I’d repeat that a few times. Sometimes, she’d grab my hand and correct how I was holding it. I don’t know how long we sat there, but eventually I was able to get a few sentences down. She told me to keep practicing—she was very happy to meet me and wanted to talk with me more. I smiled and thanked her for taking the time to teach me. Kirito flew out of the room, ending our lesson abruptly.

            “THIS DOESN’T TELL ME ANYTHING!” he exclaimed.

            Both Sinon and I stared up at him. He repeated himself so that she understood.

            “The data just shows a huge burst in energy,” he said. “There’s no clear information as to how you got there, but you weren’t there very long.”

            Sinon put her hand over her mouth for a moment and then launched into her response. She struck me as a quick thinker.

            “If he just ‘appeared’ there, then we’re talking technology that can either teleport someone or maybe even time travel itself,” she said. “We haven’t even attempted to work with time travel—it’s just too theoretical at this point. Who would gain from making him time travel anyways?”

            I interjected, unfortunately unable to put all of my thoughts into words. Kirito took over and started to translate what I couldn’t say.

            “I was shoved into a giant pool-like thing,” I said. “The contents were like…water? But it looked like the night sky. I thought I was being drowned and pulled to the bottom. After coming to, I was with you and Asuna and Yuuki.”

            The group fell silent. We all stared at some point on the floor. My description probably sounded crazy to them. I’d immediately assume it was magic or the work of the gods, but these two didn’t seem keen on that idea. They kept talking about data and technology. I had to give it a try, though.

            “I think it was magic,” I said.

            “I’m not really a believer in magic…” Sinon said.

            Kirito shook his head.

            “I don’t think we should discount the idea,” he said. “It’s no crazier than suggesting time travel or teleportation. All of those ideas don’t seem very scientific or reasonable, but it might be our best shot at determining how Eugeo got here. But if it’s something impossible for us, how do we learn how to send him back?”

            Sinon laughed.

            “I guess we’ll have to figure that one out from scratch, huh?” she said.

            Kirito frowned and glanced at me.

            “It’s gonna take us _ages_ to do that,” he whined.

            I stared back down at the floor.

            “But, hey, don’t fret,” he said, reaching over and lifting my chin up. “We’ll figure something out.”

            “Wh…what are you doing?” I stammered.

            He yanked his hand back without a second thought.

            “N-nothing,” he said. “Either way, we’ll sort out how to get you back. Somehow.”

            He turned and hurried down the hallway. Sinon and I shared a confused look. I thanked her again for her help and for teaching me some signs. I said I’d practice with Kirito later. She smiled and told me she looked forward to talking with me again. I turned and hurried after Kirito. He seemed tense. As he walked, I wondered to myself why he was going through this trouble for me at all. The way he’d just touched my chin, I was scared to think there might be some ulterior motive.

            _I’m sorry. I’m in love with Alice. It won’t work between us._

            But then again, I had no proof. He’d tell me eventually, I hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Waited until the end to state this but- as I've said with other fics where I venture into things I'm not, specifically people from the Deaf community: please call me out for corrections if I need correcting! It is 100% okay to call me out and I 100% will fix things! My point of reference is my sister, who is learning ASL to be an interpreter. As such, she is not a member of the Deaf community and while she's a good reference, she's not a perfect one.


	7. Difficult Search

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Are you readyyyyyy? For more Alice?

            “We’re studying interdimensional travel,” Kikuoka said.

            Alice was certain she didn’t know what that meant at all. The three men standing before her were from somewhere else—somewhere that definitely wasn’t here. The Eugeo standing before her had no connection to her Eugeo other than in name and appearance. Kikuoka sat down on a desk and crossed one leg over the other.

            “Allow me to break it down simpler for you,” he said. “In the world we’re from, a genius by the name of Kayaba Akihiko discovered proof for the existence of other dimensions—words that were mirrors of our own, but functioned differently and outside of the physical grasp of our world. They’re like different timelines, almost. In our timeline, this Eugeo grew up to be a historian, married the love of his life, our technical guru Kazuto, and now they work for my team studying travel between the different timelines.

            “Your Eugeo, however, grew up here, in a timeline with a different technological advancement than ours. What you know about his life is only true for this timeline. There might be other Eugeos with different lovers and different interests. Some might have died already in their timelines.”

            Hearing this, Eugeo shuffled his feet and frowned. Kirito clutched him into an embrace. Kikuoka gave them both a funny look. Kirito appeared to be pouting.

            “I don’t want to think of him as marrying someone else,” he said, puckering his lips like a child.

            Eugeo rolled his eyes.

            “I’m not marrying someone else, that’s not _me_ that’s just another person in another dimension who looks like me and has the same name,” he grumbled.

            None of this made things any clearer. Alice thought she understood, but at the same time, her mind was so overwhelmed that she staggered backwards and plopped down onto the ground, holding her head in her hands. All she wanted was to know where her friend had gone. This was all too much.

            “We’ve managed to locate where the water wall sent your Eugeo,” Kirito said, waving around a small tablet.

            Alice lifted her head up.

            “Can you get him back?” she asked.

            The three men cast each other uneasy glances. She felt her irritation start to boil. Why wouldn’t they answer her? She got back up to her feet and marched over to Kikuoka. Trying not to sound too brash, she grasped him by the shirt and demanded that he explain himself.

            “Calm down, calm down,” Kikuoka said. “Locating your friend was the easy part. The hard part is getting to him.”

            She huffed.

            “Besides, I’m not done explaining,” he said, flashing a look at Kirito.

            The black-haired man sheepishly shrunk down a bit.

            “Kayaba worked with the Kyeaclae people to build this portal, informally referred to as a ‘water wall,’” he continued. “In a manner of speaking, this technology is still rather new to us. We haven’t got a good handle on how to hop from timeline to timeline just yet. It’s not an exact science yet. This was our first test—trying to get everyone through to the SAME point at the SAME time.”

            Alice sat back a little and crossed her arms. So, these people had done something with Eugeo, but there was no clear way to get him back? She glanced over at the two technician interns, wondering if they might be more informative or helpful than Kikuoka. Eugeo was staring at the tablet funny.

            “Is something wrong?” Kirito asked.

            His brow furrowed. He snatched the tablet out of Kirito’s hands, glanced around, and then leaned forward.

            “Is this the only tablet you have for tracking people through the water wall?” he asked.

            Kikuoka made a funny face but nodded.

            “Please be careful with it,” he said. “We didn’t bring supplies to build a second one.”

            Eugeo’s eyes darkened. For a moment, Alice wanted to laugh. She imagined he felt the pressure of holding the only version of a valuable device in his hands. Kirito gave Kikuoka a stressed glare.

            “Why wouldn’t you bring something as a backup?” he whined.

            “Kirito, what could possibly happen to it?” Kikuoka said, laughing.

            “The only one, huh?” Eugeo mumbled.

            Kirito now turned to give Eugeo a funny look. He tilted his head to the side.

            “Eugeo?” he said. “Is something wrong?”

            Eugeo looked in Alice’s direction, then down to the tablet, and then back up to Alice. Their eyes were locked for an uncomfortable moment. His eyes seemed to be silently begging for her forgiveness. Her eyes widened. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Eugeo mouthed the words so that only she could see them.

            “I’m sorry, Alice.”

            She leapt forward. She had to stop him. Eugeo pulled back the arm holding the tablet and then thrust it forward, slinging the device at the ground as hard as he could. The small thing shattered, spraying unfamiliar pieces across the grass. Alice dropped down to the ground and grasped at the little bits, desperately wondering if she could put them back together. Kikuoka sat there in shock, probably wondering why his intern would sabotage his only machine.

            “E-Eugeo! What the hell was that for?” Kirito stammered.

            There was a dangerous look on his face. Alice couldn’t place what emotion that was. He wasn’t staring down at her, though. He was staring numbly at the device. Was it some form of jealousy? Perhaps that was a stretch.

            “We can’t,” he said flatly.

            Kikuoka finally snapped out of his shock.

            “Can’t what?” he said. “Don’t you realize what you’ve done? We can’t find her friend without that!”

            Eugeo’s eyes flitted back over to Alice. She wanted to be angry with him, but he looked so much like her Eugeo that she didn’t know how. They were different people—she couldn’t understand this one’s motives.

            “You can’t go to that timeline,” Eugeo said.

            “You wanna explain why?” Kirito asked. “I don’t think this girl cares about danger or anything, I think she cares about her friend.”

            There was a painful flinch in Eugeo’s expression.

            “I thought you trusted me,” he said, with a little more edge. “Think about the situation, Kirito. Really think about it. Look at Alice, over there, looking for her Eugeo, and you think long and hard about this situation.”

            For a moment, Kirito looked pensive and a bit hurt. But then, his eyebrows raised. His eyes widened. He slowly turned his head to look at Alice and his mouth dropped open into a perfect ‘o.’ He then looked between Alice and Kikuoka, his expression spelling conflict. His boss. His lover. And the girl with a friend in danger. He clearly didn’t want to choose poorly. Reaching over, he brushed past Alice to get to Kikuoka and faced the man, frowning.

            “We need to talk,” he said.

            He cast Alice a sideways glance and then looked back at his boss.

            “Privately.”

            Alice swallowed. She looked over at Eugeo. He was staring at a point on the floor among the debris he’d created. Alice stood back up and pressed her hands to her chest.

            “Why…?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

            His expression darkened.

            “Perhaps soon, I’ll be brave enough to explain myself,” he said quietly.

            With that being said, he turned and left the tent, leaving behind three pairs of vacant eyes, each belonging to someone equally wondering the same thing.

            “What now?”


	8. Dinner Conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Is this filler? It feels like filler! Ugh.

            “Burst of energy…burst of energy…”

            Kirito had been muttering the same thing all evening. He tapped a pen against the table instead of eating the food in front of him. I slowly worked on my plate. His frustration was painted on his face so obviously that he didn’t need to use words to express how much this situation confounded him. I cleared my throat.

            “Maybe take a break?” I suggested.

            For the first time in a few hours, Kirito looked up at me. His expression was now bewildered.

            “Aren’t you the one that wants to get back to your precious Alice as soon as possible?” he asked.

            I blinked at him.

            “Well…I know I was a bit riled up,” I said. “But don’t forget to eat on account of wanting to help me. You were the one that said I needed to have food in my system if I wanted to function enough to get answers, weren’t you?”

            He gave me a funny look. Saying nothing, he set his pen down and turned to his plate to start eating. As soon as he put the first bite in his mouth, he let out an unseemly moan of pleasure. He really had been hungry. I resisted letting him know that I’d told him so. He shoveled food into his mouth at the speed of light. I rolled my eyes and glanced around the kitchen. My eyes stopped on a picture of him and Asuna. I set my fork down.

            “Hey, Kirito…” I said.

            “Hmm?” he said, lifting his head up.

            Pasta was hanging out of his mouth. I blinked at him, unamused. He sucked it up into his mouth and ignored the face I was making.

            “If Asuna married Yuuki, then why do you still have…kind of intimate pictures of you two on your fridge?”

            He glanced over at the pictures and frowned.

            “It’s not like she’s going to visit me again,” he muttered.

            I bit my lip.

            “Are you hoping she’ll still come back to you?” I asked.

            He shook his head.

            “No, I don’t suppose so,” he said. “I mean, I wish them both well. They’re a very good match for each other, both in their fields and as a couple. I don’t want to get in between that. I’ve come to terms with my feelings by now. It’s just a shame to throw away good memories just because things are different now.”

            I hummed. He had a point. It seemed weird to me to keep pictures of yourself and your ex-girlfriend, but his point was valid. In a world where memories could be saved like this, it made sense to keep pictures that were bittersweet as well as ones that sparked complete joy.

            “What, did you have a bad breakup with someone?” Kirito asked, shoving more pasta in his mouth.

            Frowning, I shook my head.

            “I’ve never dated anyone before,” I said.

            He raised his eyebrows.

            “Want to try dating? I’m presently available?” he said, giving me a stupid grin.

            I sat back in my chair and gave him a funny look.

            “Why…would I do that?” I asked.

            He looked a bit crestfallen, but maybe that was a part of his joke. Kirito pushed some of his food around in circles on his plate for a moment and then committed to scooping up a mouthful to eat. He chewed on it for a while.

            “Well…?” I said.

            He cleared his throat.

            “It. It was a joke,” he said, averting his eyes. “You have your Alice, after all. I’m sure she’s really something, since you’re determined to get back fast to be the first to propose to her.”

            My face burned with embarrassment. I shook my head and waved my hands.

            “I-I wouldn’t just propose out of nowhere!” I exclaimed. “I just want permission to court her. I know it’s proper to get married at our age, but—”

            “You guys get married at eighteen?” Kirito said, smiling. “Not that I can say much. Asuna and Yuuki are pretty young for newlyweds. Nineteen and seventeen.”

            I hummed.

            “It’s normal to get married in your teens,” I said. “Because you need to have all of your children by your twenties. People don’t live that long.”

            Kirito just laughed.

            “We live a _lot_ longer now,” he said. “I didn’t want to get married so young, actually. That’s why Asuna and I broke up.”

            I raised my eyebrows at him now.

            “I think for a little while I did, and then I realized the value of taking things slow,” he said. “So, I think it’s a good thing that you want to take your time with Alice. Really. You should be allowed to take things slow. I realize that if you go back your lifespan is a lot shorter than mine, but it’s better to take things slow and steady even if you die young than to jump to conclusions. Would Asuna and I have divorced if we’d have gotten married that young? Possibly.”

            I just gave him a funny look. I didn’t know what to contribute here. He was trying to validate my feelings and actions without knowing anything about my culture or how things worked back in my Rulid. I decided to jump back to a previous comment.

            “Why did you want me to practice dating with you?” I asked.

            He almost choked on the next piece of pasta he stuck in his mouth. I sighed.

            “I…don’t…don’t DO that, Eugeo!”  
            I took a sip of my water.

            “You’re the one who asked such a silly thing,” I said. “We’ve only known each other for a day.”

            And yet, Kirito was willing to jump through all sorts of hoops to help me. I narrowed my eyes at him. What made him want to help me? He still hadn’t given me a clear answer on that. Would I be wondering that forever? It was only a day, as I’d noted. Maybe he’d be honest with me eventually.


	9. An Impossibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Firstly, please take a look at the tags if you read tags because I have updated them with a trigger warning! And because of this, I need to have people prepared! This chapter took a turn as I was writing it, so I needed to update the tags. They are relevant to this chapter! So, if you would like a trigger/content warning, please see the end notes prior to reading!!!

            “What do you think of all of this?”

            The question came from Yuuki, who was poring over an email that Kirito had sent to the Konno household that evening after doing some digging. At the site where they’d been working and found Eugeo, there had apparently been a huge burst of energy just before they’d gone down there. The big problem with that was that no one seemed to have noticed a large wave of energy in that location. Something would have picked it up. Vibrations felt from the release. A sound. It couldn’t just be silent and only show up on the energy readings without some other trace.

            “I think someone must have messed with the data,” Asuna replied, deftly slipping her knife through a piece of steak. “I didn’t feel, see, or hear anything at that time. Did you?”

            She slipped the piece of meat between her teeth and chewed. Her wife hummed and stared down at the data. Yuuki kicked her feet under the table, as if excited. Asuna watched her, wondering what was going through that head of hers. Yuuki was a brilliant doctor, but when it came to stuff like this, she could only sit there and be fascinated. She’d been brought into the excavation project in case there were human remains. It was up to Asuna to deal with the archaeological findings.

            Finally, Yuuki shook her head.

            “I think that’s why it’s so interesting,” she said. “It was barely detected for how large of a burst of energy it was. The energy was something we’ve never dealt with before. But the instruments picked up something that human beings couldn’t, like radiation or something. Do you think Eugeo is radioactive?”

            Asuna blinked and chased her food down with a gulp of water.

            “Did he come up as radioactive in your tests?” she asked.

            Yuuki frowned. It was almost a pout. Asuna tried her best to keep her chuckle to herself. Yuuki was adorable when she was pouting. She reached across the table and placed her hand on top of her wife’s. Two ruby-colored eyes blinked up at her.

            “I do think you’re onto something, though,” she said.

            Her smile returned.

            “Really?” she asked.

            Laughing, Asuna gave a quick nod.

            “Eugeo’s body might have the answers we’re looking for about this,” she said. “That much of an energy release had to have some kind of an impact on his body. I’m sure if it will help answer his questions, Eugeo will be more than willing to let you examine him again for clues.”

            Upon hearing this, her wife nodded excitedly. Asuna smiled at her for a moment, and then she frowned again, lifting her glass up just enough so that Yuuki couldn’t see. This whole predicament didn’t make sense, but the worst part of it was the toll it must have been taking on Kirito. Asuna gripped her glass. She remembered it clearly. She was certain he did, too.

* * *

_Two years prior…_

            “Kazuto…I’m sorry.”

            She saw his back tense up. He gripped the threshold with his left hand and stared at the broken window in front of him. Everything was blocked off with police tape, but being Shino’s subordinate, she supposed it didn’t matter. They were all just apprentices, trying to move into their careers without an issue. No one expected something like this to happen.

            “Don’t call me that.”

            Asuna frowned. She wanted to comfort him, but she’d lost the right to do that ages ago. Their breakup had been civil, of course. He just wanted something else. He wanted to stay young and unmarried for a while; she wanted to marry someone and stay with them forever. She respected that, and she’d moved on to go out with Yuuki. She’d thought that Kirito had moved on as well. But that was all ruined now, based on the shattered glass on the floor.

            Kirito stepped over the police tape and knelt down among the shards. Asuna wanted to shout at him and tell him to come back this instant. The broken window wasn’t patched up, and on the other side of it, there was a fall too great for anyone to survive. She didn’t feel comfortable with him sitting there, staring out of the window forlornly like this. But she didn’t want to follow him into the glassy mess, either.

            “Kirito, please…” she begged softly. “Sitting there doesn’t change what happened.”

            His shoulders started to quiver. Perhaps her words had been to sharp. She drew in a deep breath and stepped over the tape. She gingerly stepped around the shards, all-too aware of the open-toed dress shoes she was wearing. She hadn’t selected the wrong type of shoes for work today, though. This was her funeral attire.

            She knelt down beside Kirito. Leaning forward just enough to see his face, she cautiously placed a hand on his back. He tensed up for a moment, but then he buried his face in his hands. For a moment, she’d registered the tears streaming down his face. What could she say to him in this moment? It was horrifying for her. She couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. Her eyes wandered back to the broken window.

            There had been a fight. Or so she’d been told. One of the managers had gotten into a spat with him, and in her anger, she’d thrown him through the glass. Quinella, she believed the woman’s name was. What kind of brute strength could not only lift a man, but throw him through a window this high up on a skyscraper? These windows were thick simply because of their height. Asuna suspected something else was going on. Thus, the police tape. Some thought it was premediated murder.

            Asuna, she suspected suicide.

            The answer might have been locked away in Kazuto’s heart. As she looked from the broken window to her friend and former lover, she wondered what he might know that no one else did. What secrets was he unwilling to tell? Would he stand before a court and clear Quinella’s name? Or would he agree that she killed him and allow her to suffer the punishments for her actions? Without knowing the truth, she didn’t know how Kirito would act, but she suspected he’d clear her name anyways. Even if she were guilty.

            “You can’t get glass on your suit,” she said, trying to encourage him to stand up by tugging on his shoulder. “Come on. Don’t you want to say a last good-bye?”

            Kirito didn’t move. Her heart throbbed with guilt. She glanced back at the doorway and saw her girlfriend had quietly appeared. Yuuki pointed at Kirito and mouthed a question, asking if he would be okay. Asuna bit her lip and shook her head. Feeling as if she were out of options, Asuna stood back up and stepped back over to her girlfriend. She turned to leave the room. If Kirito missed the funeral, he would have to deal with that for himself. He was only sixteen, after all.

            But as she turned to go, she heard his voice, very faintly.

            “Maybe I should join him.”

            It happened faster than she thought was possible. He was already at the ledge, staring down at the busy street below them. Her body was in motion before her mind knew what risky thing she was doing. She threw herself forward and grasped his arm—the only thing left for her to grasp. Her body protested the sudden addition of his weight to hers, but she couldn’t let go. One of her friends had already fallen from here and lost his life. She wasn’t letting him do the same thing.

            “You IDIOT!” she screamed.

            Kirito looked up at her, horrified. Tears streamed off of her face and fell onto his cheeks.

            “You idiot, Eugeo wouldn’t want this!” she cried. “Where the hell do you think you’re going, Kazuto?”

            His head dropped down.

            “Just let go, Asuna…”

            “Never!” she cried. “I’m not losing you, too! Yuuki…! Yuuki, help!”

            She was slipping. His weight was too much for one arm, but she didn’t want to let go of the window pane. Broken glass was digging into her skin from the floor and the frame. Trusting in her girlfriend, she let go and grasped Kirito’s hand with both of hers. Moments later, just as she felt herself sliding out of the window, Yuuki grasped her waist and hoisted them both up into the office space again. Not wasting a moment, Asuna grabbed Kirito by the collar and dragged him into the hallway.

            “Why…why did he go where I can’t follow…?” Kirito asked.

            Having given up on his attempt to leave the world in the same way Eugeo had, Kirito crumpled down into a ball at Asuna’s feet and finally sobbed. She and Yuuki, after making sure to secure the door to the crime scene, sat down next to him and gently hugged him together, reassuring him that Eugeo’s soul was at peace.

* * *

_Present…_

            Asuna tapped her finger on the glass and frowned at the liquid. This couldn’t be easy for Kirito, no matter how she looked at it. She couldn’t say it was easy for herself, either. Nor for Yuuki. Or Sinon. They’d all been doing their best to ignore the identical features, knowing good and well he wasn’t who they thought he was. And yet they all must have had the same gut reaction when he’d spoken his name. How was Kirito feeling at this moment, with him at his house, oblivious to the history the four of them faced?

            After all, it was as if he was staring at a dead man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Content warning for chapter 9; Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Suicide.


End file.
